When Books Tackle Sports
While books about sports don’t exactly dominate the racks filled with millions of books at Barnes & Noble and Borders, the top-selling titles in the genre continue to make a splash. Books under all sorts of covers will be the talk of New York this weekend at Book Expo America, the largest book industry event in North America and one of the biggest gatherings of English language publishers in the world.
A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez by New York Times sportswriter Selena Roberts and The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci have dominated recent headlines. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall is currently the top-selling sports title on Amazon.com and #63 on the site’s top 100 bestseller list. What’s more, athletes continue to enjoy healthy advances. Last year, Grand Central Publishing won the rights to publish Serena Williams’ upcoming memoir, tentatively titled Queen of the Court, for a reports $1.3 million.
BookExpo America officials note that this year’s convention will not only play host to exhibitors and publishers from 37 countries, it will also boast a wide cross-section of different types of publishers, from small to large, specialized to general interest, independent to large corporate entity. More than 1,500 exhibitors will be participate in BEA this year, and with well over a thousand publishers and many more thousands of new books on display, BEA’s wide array of publishers and titles provides attendees the chance to uncover unique and special books, including, of course, sports-themed ones.
We’re using the setting of Book Expo America to make a major announcement of our own. This fall, Morgan James Publishing will release the first title in The Sports Professor Series, a collection of books by top professionals within the sports industry. Boasting a list of authors comprising owners, athletes, architects, sponsors, and fans, the Sports Professor Series is the first-ever book collection devoted to the dollars-and-cents side of sports.
The first title to be released in The Sports Professor Series is Return of the Gold: The Journey of Jerry Colangelo and the Redeem Team, written by Phoenix sportswriter Dan Bickley with Colangelo. Behind that is our own Beyond the Box Score: An Insider’s Guide to the $750 Billion Business of Sports, two titles from Pop Warner, and many more.
